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Choosing doctors in the dark: consumers can’t yet pick docs based on quality

The usual questions a rational health citizen might ask when selecting a physician based on quality aren’t consistently yielding the best choices, according to a study funded by The Commonwealth Fund, Associations Between Physician Characteristics and Quality of Care. Researchers found that individual physician-comparative parameters such as malpractice claims and disciplinary actions, years in practice or [...]

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The role of retail health clinics post-health reform

  Retail health clinics have served American health consumers for about a decade. What have we learned over these ten years? As retail clinics proliferate the U.S. health care ecosystem, what is their impact on the health system, health consumers, and the health economy? The RAND report, Policy Implications of the Use of Retail Clinics, [...]

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Health reform = meaningful use among health executives

Meeting meaningful use for inpatient EHRs is the top priority among the many challenges health executives face when considering how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will impact their organizations. Overall, 2 in 3 health execs place MU for inpatient EHRs as the “highest priority;” among health IT executives, the proportion citing this as the [...]

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More money, less effective: the U.S. ranks last again in health system effectiveness

  Among seven developed countries – Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America — it’s the U.S. that ranks dead last in the effectiveness of the nation’s health system. In particular, the U.S. rates poorly on the issues of coordination of health care, cost-related problems causing [...]

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Getting Americans to "right-size" health care: understanding evidence-based medicine

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